Day: July 16, 2018

I picked this book up based on the cover and a recommendation from a wonderful bookseller – she knows my love of du Maurier and thought it would be impolite not to mention a book which has “echoes of Daphne du Maurier” on the front cover as a review quote. And I get the “echoes” I really do, but it’s just hard for me not to judge a book harshly when it’s promising something so big.

Wrecker is an interesting read – it focuses around a woman called Mary Blight who lives in a rural coastal village in Cornwall. Part of the day to day life of the villagers is shipwrecks, and we start with Mary going down to the beach to see what she can scavenge from the wreck. This time she discovers a lot more than she bargained for, and that’s really where our story starts.

Mary for me was a very bizarre character who I couldn’t fully understand or relate to – which makes it a bit more difficult in a first person narrative. On paper she’s my dream character in a historical novel; she’s independent, does what she wants and for herself only, she’s strong and unapologetic in her ways yet I didn’t connect to her because I didn’t understand her motivation. She seemed quite a conflicted character to read, and this uncertainty in her characterisation made it really difficult for me to enjoy the book to it’s full.

As for the plot, there didn’t really seem to be much of it. It was more of a meandering piece with a lot of nothing much happening. I suppose one of the main focuses is religion, and there was a lot more religion than I was expecting. That conflict between the traditional – pagan – beliefs of this small community and the Methodist faith that is thrust upon them by a relative stranger that made up quite a lot of the plot.

I think I would have enjoyed this book more had it been something more. For me there was just something missing even though it was a very well constructed and researched book but something just kept jolting me out of the historical setting and back to reality – it wasn’t a book I found myself absorbed in.

All in all though, I think this was a really good debut – while I find the likeness to Daphne du Maurier tenuous at best (the only connection I can find seems to be Cornwall and boats?) it’s not at all a bad book and I think I would keep my eye out for Noel O’Reilly in the future

Hello! I'm Ashleigh - a self professed (failed) mad scientist who has a tendency to blog about books.